Monday, September 1, 2014

Pelegar: Rise of the Cult of Vorsag-Null

For fun, I am posting some campaign notes from my last grand Pathfinder campaign in Chirak. It didn't get too far, due largely to the severe burnout I was starting to feel with Pathfinder, but the campaign premise was great....so see below for some insight into the mad methodology of how I plot out story arcs in a sort of "open plot" format. Also, a case study in how ridiculously complicated/esoteric long running campaigns can get. Anyway, I use "plot poimt summaries" like this to keep track of the who/what/why as to what's going on.

"The Voice of Vorsag-Null"

The Fall of Pelegar campaign

Plot #1: Rise of the
cult of Vorsag-Null

Vorsag-Null is an abyssal creature from Perdition itself,
one of the original overlords of that ancient world, who succumbed to the
temptation of power and chaos offered by Ga’Thon. Vorsag-Null was lost to time
when he was supposedly slain during the Final War, but this was not actually
the case.

Like many of the spirit lords and other immortals during the
final era of the old gods, Vorsag-Null had been rendered all but impervious to harm
through the power of his god. He was leader of an army of hundreds of
thousands, slavering demons of Perdition who had crossed the bridge of time and
space to assault the world of men in a bid for total dominance. He was first to
set foot upon the Abyssal Rift created by Ga’Thon when he subsumed the feywild
into his own mass…and first to claim one of the Abyssal layers for his own.

Vorsag-Null returned to the mortal plane to begin his siege,
amassing his army through great rifts opening in the dominion of Pelegar, what
was then known as Serevalis, a republic of elves who had been driven mad by the
great wave of power which swept over the land; only the Elves of Taretos, who
had sworn in secrecy their loyalty to Ga’Thon were spared the madness of the destruction
of the Feywild. The abyssal armies descended upon the riven elven kingdom,
slaughtering all they could, only to be surprised by the rise of the first
elven undying. Amidst the battle Vorsag-Null and twenty other great demon lords
observed from their fortress at Taretos.

Unexpectedly, Ga’Thon, who had transmogrified into a great
and eclipsing mass in the sky with the intent of descending upon the
westerlands to begin his geat absorption, was slain. The power of
Akquinarios….or perhaps it was Pornyphiros….struck him down and the two gods in
collision perished. The divine energy released at that instant swept over the
land and eradicated most of the lesser demons and undying in a brief flash of
destructive energy. Then the great mass of the dying god plunged to the earth
and engulfed a vast swathe of land, Ga’Thon’s already moldering flesh
decomposing into natural elements, forging the vast Cossarit mountains in one
fell swoop. From his bowels erupted the disgorged contents of the feywild,
which had been reduced to pure chaos and destruction; thus was the weeping wall
formed. Amidst all this Mount Taretos, once the greatest single mountain in all
the world, erupted instead from the fallen godflesh like a great pike through
ga’Thon’s no longer immortal heart.

Vorsag-Null was not slain at that time as many thought, but
with his brothers they forged through the arterial tunnels of the god in search
of that heart, where they knew the Zodiac Stone which held his power must be
located. The fight to this location was difficult, for the body of the god was
already shifting to natural elements even as whole chunks of it broke off to
become hideous atropal monsters, undead creatures of divine flesh seeking to
carry on some sort of eviscerated half-life.

When Vorsag-Null at last arrived with his strongest brethren
in the heart-chamber of the Zodiac Stone, it was to the sight of Ga’Thon’s
divine spirit engaging in its last act of defiance against the Protector Gods
which had laid it low. It shattered the stone even as it bound itself into the
sacred artifact, and ten powerful shards pierced the chests of the ten
surviving demon lords who had made it this far. The stones, driven by Ga’Thon’s
will, called upon the demon Lords to each carry the stones to the four corners
of the earth, where they would “hatch” into the children of Ga’Thon….the
Thousandspawn.

Driven by the power of Ga’Thon’s spirit, nine of the ten
demon lords found themselves driven to flee the land, to walk the four corners
of the world where each in turn found that the shard within their chest,
feeding upon their demonic essence, “hatched” and in turn brought forth one
hundred miniscule shards, each with 1/1000th of the spirit of
Ga’Thon; each shard imbedded itself within a suitable host, and that host became
one of the Thousandspawn, a monster with a purpose: to heal the sundered spirit
of Ga’Thon, and to one day reunite as the god reborn, to finish the job he had
started.

There was one demon lord who did not follow this path:
Vorsag-Null staggered out of the heart-chamber, realizing he had been infected
with a dire disease unique to chaos-kin, and that he was being used by his
former master to set about a three-thousand year cycle of regeneration and
revenge. Uncertain that he wanted to sacrifice himself for his dead god’s
greater will, Vorsag-Null sought out the only help he could imagine: the former
seraphim, the angel who had fallen in battle during the final War and been
inextricably bathed in the corrupting blood of Ga’Thon called Zeraphys, but later
known only as Gloom.

Vorsag-Null explained his plight. Zeraphys, driven mad by
what the demons and gods had done to him, used his surgical skill to extract
the shard from Vorsag-Null’s own heart, though the demon suffered terrible
damage from the act and fell into torpor. Gloom could not destroy the shard, so
he cast it deep into the mountains of godlfesh, and proclaimed that he would
hearafter cut from the heart of any other god or lesser being the Zodiac Stones
they might dare bring within his new dominion….he eschewed the gods forever
after, and proclaimed only murder for their future.

In the mountains the shard rested without a host for weeks
until a lone warrior of the Great War who had somehow survived, the Inadasir
hero known as Caeledus, found the stone, and it force-bonded with him. Caeledus
was not as resourceful as Vorsag-Null, and wandered the land for a year in
search of a cure before the stone overwhelmed him and he became host to its
seed. It was from Caeledus that the human-like Thousandspawn all descend.

Vorsag-Null rested in the ruinous catacombs beneath the
war-torn land of the Great Pass where the city of Valen was built, a rift in
the mountains which formed from the godflesh of Ga’Thon where he had been
struck the mortal blow by the other gods which sought to slay him. His body, in
torpor and unable to awaken, dreamed dark dreams, and learned of the ancient
presence of Molabal which plagued the lands of Pelegar, an ancient word which
had been used to describe the region even before humanity rose to civilization.
In these dreams he learned of great power, and his astral form dwelt within the
city of Nith. So did Vorsag-Null survive for centuries until a scant thirty
years ago, when a man named Tenor Morain, a simple butcher and occasional grave-robber,
on an excursions into the ancient catacombs beneath Valen, discovered the body
of Vorsag-Null by accident.

Hearing the dream-like call of Vorsag-Null was what brought
Tenor Morain to the catacombs, and he came prepared, sacrificing his unsuspecting
companions to feed the body of the demon lord. As Vorsag-Null recovered his
physical abilities, he nonetheless found himself intensely weak. He needed more
blood…a great deal of it, in fact, from the murder of innocents and
unsuspecting. He charged Tenor Morain with the acquisition of this blood, and
in exchange would make him nearly immortal. Thus did Tenor become the vile
Voice of Vorsag-Null, hunting those who the demon required to sustain and
recover its flesh; this process would take decades, and require the blood of
1,313 souls sacrificed and fed to the god. After thirty years, Vorsag-Null is
at last awakening in flesh as well as spirit, and with the pall of Molabal
lifted, he is once more able to command power in both dream and flesh…

Goals:

Vorag-Null is mobile, but to restore his full power he needs
three final sacrifices, which must be three souls of great power or notability.
He has decided that the three beings he must consume the souls of are as
follows:

Lady Nexi Tinar,
an exiled noblewoman and pure soul who has aasimar blood in her veins. She was
saved some years ago by the avatar Mardieur Mardieux, and brought to her home
city of Talosin. Lady Tinar is said to have the reincarnated soul of an ancient
queen and wife to Pornyphiros from long ago.

Lord Alton Kandros,
a chieftain of the Dalevar barbarians and rumored to be a pureblood descendant
of the lost line of the Inadasir emperor. Kandros is regarded as the greatest
warrior in the land.

Salin Zomastar, a
human boy of 16 years who lives in Fartheren as a waif. The nature of his soul
and why he is desired by Vorsag-Null remains a mystery, but the cultists are
even now mounting an expedition to find the boy. Unknown to them, Salin is
actually the son of the High Priest of Vagre, Gavel Zomastar, who himself is
seeking the boy to finish initiating him into the fire cult. Salin has a
natural talent as a pryomantic sorcerer, but rejects it for the life of a
rogue.

The Voice – once
known as Tenor Morain, he is now a terrifying near-immortal killer who has
spent three decades murding for his demon lord. A grotesque, fat beast of a man
who’s flesh is all but impregnable, with cannibalistic appetites.

Yaros Eraskar –
The drow noble of Taretos who is also an exile of his people, he has forged an
alliance with the cult and offers his agents to their cause. His real motives
are unclear, but some suspect he hunts for Vorsag-Null’s true name so that he
may control the demon when it returns so he can exact revenge on his enemies in
Taretos.

Yonadra Vespiri –
Sabiri witch of the plains, she has consorted with Vorsag-Null for years and
gained perpetual youth as a result, learning the secrets of murder and magic
from him. She is a terrible witch who her people fear. She has allied herself
with his cult and eagerly seeks to make her astral husband flesh.

The important thing is that in a million years, when the brain-worms of Arcturus IX have annihilated us throughout the galaxy, there will be no surviving recordings of blogs to be found by the cephalopods that evolve to replace us. In this way will their civilization advance and prosper.